LIKE LAMBS AMONG WOLVES

What is the style that must characterize the witness of Christ? Luke shows us in today’s Gospel passage. Let us note, first of all, how the disciples are sent by the Master. What does it mean? That the disciple does not appoint himself to the proclamation of the Gospel. It is only the Lord who calls and sends. Self-nomination is not a generous gesture but a reckless, thoughtless and presumptuous one. Any leadership in the Church is born only as a free and obedient response to God. Never forget it! Furthermore, the first called, as we read in the Gospels, were normal people: they had a family, responsibilities, a job. They were not high-ranking people nor did they belong to particular religious classes. They were ordinary people but called to extraordinary enterprises. The mission, whether small or large, is normally accompanied by conflict. Jesus says it clearly: “I send you out like lambs among wolves” (Lk 10:3). Be careful: lambs and wolves do not only attest to the conflict but also to the disproportion. Let us explain. The conflict is not on equal terms. Why? Because the wolf is an image of violence and deceit, two attitudes that the disciple absolutely cannot use. And here lies the apparent weakness (image of the lamb) of the disciple in the face of simply human logic. Lambs and wolves are therefore two logics that contrast. They are the evangelical logic and the worldly one. In short, here emerges the strong temptation that the disciple can take, that is, to use worldly power to make the Word he announces more effective. But a search for means belonging to worldly logic betrays a profound lack of faith in the One who sends. Poverty, then, as Jesus reminds us, is not to be understood simply with the lack of means. More positively, it is the invitation to place one’s trust in the Father. In short, in his going out into the world, the disciple must not be afraid to face conflict with logic different from that of Christ. However, he must not fall into the deception of stealing the world’s logic but trust in the truth. In the same context, Matthew states that we must be simple as doves and cunning as serpents (cf. Mt 10:16) that is, no violence, no deviousness but the intelligence to make the truth convincing in the transparency of those who reject any deception to assert themselves over others.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey